


The Abyss

by KrastBannert



Series: Moments [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Battle of Six Fronts, Introspection, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, battle aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24796906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrastBannert/pseuds/KrastBannert
Summary: “And what about my team? How many more times will they be able to look into the abyss, how many times before they won't ever recover the pieces of themselves that this job takes?Like I said, sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day. Sometimes, the day just……ends.”-SSA Aaron Hotchner, Criminal Minds Season 4, Episode 26 “…And Back”In the aftermath of the Battle of Six Fronts, Sig wanders the empty streets of the Last City. He wanders, gazing at the devastation, and ponders the cost to the survivors...and to himself.Archive warning is for semi-graphic to graphic depictions of injuries and death. Also, there is implied PTSD/shock.
Series: Moments [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1164740





	The Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> As said in the summary, this story does contain semi-graphic to graphic depictions of injuries and death.

_"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Friedrich Nietzche_

-[-]-

How much could one person take?

Physically, the human body was incredibly resilient. Humans could go on for _days_ without food or water. It could fight through the harshest pain, the strongest wind, the coldest chills, and the hottest deserts. Rather than outrunning it, early humans would simply outlast their prey, and allow it to die of exhaustion. Humans could live through extreme blood loss and even the loss of every single limb. Humans could be clinically dead for _hours_ , and _still_ there was a chance they could come back.

But what of the _spirit_? Of the _soul_ , and the _mind_? How much death and destruction could one person see in a lifetime? What was the limit?

And what happened when they finally reached it?

The thoughts filtered into Sig’s mind as he wandered broken, rubble-strewn streets.

He stepped over a shattered pillar - something cracked underneath him. He didn’t need to look to know what it was. He wanted to retch.

He kept walking.

A putrid stench wafted through the air: gunpowder, ozone, burnt hair and flesh, rot, piss, shit. It hung, ever-present, in the stillness.

The siege was over. He knew that. It had been for nearly a week, now – the Fallen had vanished almost overnight. No final strikes, no parting artillery exchanges, no last bombing runs. They were just _gone_. And it was quiet once more – no constant chatter of machine guns, no thunder of artillery, no whine of jumpship drives, no roars of anger and pain.

It was so _quiet_.

But still, he couldn’t get it out of his head – every night as he tried to go to sleep, screams echoed in his ears. His dreams had become nightmares full of gunfire, blood, and broken bodies.

He steered clear of a mangled City Hawk. Smoke drifted up from the wreckage, and every once in a while a flame flicked into view. The pilot was still slumped over in her seat, a shattered piece of steel protruding from her neck. A dull brown trail in the dirt led around the corner. Sig knew only one thing in this world that looked like that.

He kept walking.

This place, this sanctuary underneath the Traveler had started out as a refuge, a place of _safety_ , of _peace_ , somewhere people could go to _forget_ about the demons and the monsters that still strode out among the ruins of a long-dead civilization. Now it was a picture of Hell.

The air was still tense, as if everything were still in jeopardy.

Sig’s eye’s wandered across a young Hunter, sitting against the wall of a busy Vanguard post: a girl, tiny, she couldn't have been older than eighteen or nineteen upon her original death. Tears cut stark lines through dust and ash from her eyes to her chin. Dried blood, a vivid dark brown, was stuck to her scalp and her cheek. He stood stock-still and watched her haltingly lift a cup to her mouth. Her eyes didn’t move; she just stared into the distance. Her eyes were glazed and dead. Water sloshed out onto her chest and face as she sipped. As he walked through the gate, he passed thick, cloth-wrapped bundles. Some had dark brown stains splotched across the fabric. Others were a deep crimson, so deep they were almost black.

He kept walking.

The Hunter girl popped into his mind. How long did he have? How long would it be until _he_ was the one that was shaking, unable to do anything but stare into the distance?

Sig kept walking, kept moving, his eyes forward until he was finally beyond the City’s perimeter. He kept walking, out to the hills. Finally, he stopped – far away, on a hill just in front of the Fallen’s fortifications. He sat on a rock and removed his helmet. His hands shook as he rested the helmet on his knee. The barest whisper of wind sighed against his cheek. The branches of the tree next to him rustled lightly and the sun shone weakly through the haze.

Sig looked down at his helmet, and someone else, someone he didn’t recognize, stared back at him. Empty dull grey eyes stared back from the face in the glass, and sweaty, unkempt blonde hair stuck to the face’s forehead. The face was craggy, covered with dirt, stubble, and scratches. The face quivered as he sighed. He let the helmet slip from his fingers. It bumped on the ground and rolled away.

The Fallen had been beaten this time – barely. It had taken nearly everything the City had just to survive. FOTC, Guardians, militias, both Light-bearers and Light-less, from the poorest civilian to the highest-ranking Guardians; they had fought side-by-side – a desperate stand against the dark. So many had died, and so many of those who’d survived…

The Battle of Six Fronts had been won, but what was the cost to those who remained?

He gazed down the slopes toward the City. The refuge he and so many hundreds of thousands had worked to build from the ground up, the last truly safe place on Earth for humanity, was different.

Rolling fields of crops and flowers were now empty, scarred, and barren. The children that had run and played in the streets had long been replaced by charred and mangled bodies. Bloodstains and explosive residue decorated walls instead of posters and graffiti. The smoking hulks of jumpships, tanks, and skiffs lay side by side in the streets that had once buzzed with life. Fires raged and their palls of thick black smoke rose in the afternoon wind, silhouetted against the pearly white of the Traveler. A permanent haze seemed to float in front of everything

The image was seared into his mind as he stared.

These were all things he had seen before. He was _old_. He had seen a lot of terrible things since his revival in Cascadia. He’d fought Warlords in North Africa and the Mediterranean, battled Fallen in the steppes of Russia and China, and scoured the dead halls of Golden Age bunkers fighting the unknown. Something in Sig told him that his past life, the one he couldn’t remember, had been similar. But as screams and gunfire echoed distantly in his ears from a thousand miles away, Sig had to wonder…

How many times could he reach into the fire, and not get burned? How many times could he journey through Hell without being trapped? How many times could he greet the face of Death?

How long could he look into the dark before he cracked?

The wind grew, and the City burned.


End file.
